Sunday, February 2, 2014

The Lady Packs a Punch

All
the while I was reading Lady of the Lake I heard the late Sam
Peckinpah's distant ghost-voice imploring, “Goddammit, Lord, send
me back down there for one last movie!”

I
toyed with saying film except that might have provoked
Peckinpah to come back anyway, on his own, just to punch me in the
mouth.

The
director known as “the picasso of violence”, who gave us those
spellbinding slow-motion mayhem scenes in The Wild Bunch,
the original The Getaway and
Straw Dogs, would have loved
Lady of the Lake from
the get-go.

Gregg
Townsley writes violent scenes the way Peckinpah films them, bringing
us so close to the action we see it break into detailed increments.
It enables us as readers to sail virtually with ex-Episcopalian
priest-cum-bounty hunter W.W. Ronin over the head of his horse onto a
sandy path, breaking his/our fall with a trained tumble that starts
with a hand, then rolls to a forearm and finally to a shoulder before
we're on our feet dashing into a tree-line.

Townsley
brings off a visceral authenticity in this opening scene and
subsequent descriptions of fights with fists, knives, clubs and guns
with a perfect marriage of writing craft and the authority of knowing
what he's talking about. Like his protagonist Ronin, Townsley's a
former “reflective, free-thinking” pastor, martial artist and
western fast-draw enthusiast. He's also a history buff who brings the
same accurate feel to his setting and background as he does to the
action sequences.

Lady
of the Lake is set in the Carson
Range around Lake Tahoe in 1880. I'd never been there in person, but
the author's skill at conveying his experience with the region and
its people transported me there on the magic carpet of imagination.
From my own travel experience I know a masterfully guided imagination
can leave richer, more poignant memories than does the ordinary
fleeting visit in the flesh.

While
the book's compelling action scenes and historically accurate setting
might be enough for some readers of the western genre, Lady
of the Lake goes much further.
It brings us engaging characters and a suspenseful story delivered in
an easy-flowing narrative that keeps the pages turning.

Coming
alive on these pages with Ronin are his friends: Ormsby County
Sheriff's Deputy “Dusty” Slade, a Washoe Indian spiritualist
named “Happy Hands”, and the widow Emma Naumann, who runs a
Christian mission for children. Other characters include U.S, Marshal
Augustus Ash, the requisite villains, who are drawn with satisfying
background and depth, and the peripheral folks who populate the
story's communities and are as recognizable and interesting as the
best supporting cast members in a movie by, say, Sam Peckinpah.

By
the end of Lady of the Lake
I'd come to know Townsley's characters as intimately as any I've
encountered in literature. Easy to imagine them sustaining the
four-book series Townsley's planned. This is the second of the two
he's published thus far, the first being East-Jesus,
Nevada, which I have yet to
read. He is currently at work on the final two: The
Pinkerton Years and True
Believer.

Maybe
Peckinpah is waiting to read them all before threatening to punch
Somebody up there if he doesn't get the chance to return to make at
least one Ronin movie.